Ashland: a mini-theater review of “Welcome Home, Jenny Sutter”

A woman lies on a stretcher in the dark, her face illuminated by a single shaft of light as she wrestles with the demons of war. Jenny Sutter (Gwendolyn Mulamba) has returned from Iraq a broken woman. Beautifully directed by Jessica Thebus, Julie Marie Myatt’s sublime new play, which made its world premiere in Ashland before transferring to the Kennedy Center, does not waste words describing the way Jenny’s injury has impacted her sense of self. We merely watch her struggle to pull a pair of jeans up over her false leg and we know all there is to know. Jenny has lost more than a limb in Iraq. She has lost her peace of mind, her will to live, her belief in human nature.Â Â She’s only 30 but she’s already spent. Being a single mom and an African-American only heightens her sense of isolation. Even in a crowd of people, Jenny feels all alone. Camped out a bus-stop unable to bring herself to go home to her family, she meets a free-spirit who changes her life. That’s Lou (the mesmerizing Kate Mulligan) a force of nature with a weakness for addiction (booze, drugs, men, whatever’s handy, really) and a soft spot for lost souls. She takes Jenny along to Slab City, where we see that veterans are not the only Americans who feel dispossessed in this harsh social and economic environment. There is more than one front in this war.Â Meet Donald (a wry Gregory Linington) a thoroughly disenfranchised young man who confronts Jenny about the uselessness of the war. His nihilism drives everyone way. Almost. Nothing can dampen Buddy (David Kelly) the gentle soul who preaches to the camp every morning and tries to rescue Lou’s spirit every night. Here in this motley camp of strangers craving freedom from convention and redemption from their pasts, Jenny grapples with the disorientation, rage and pain of coming home. Myatt strikes at the core of race and class and alienation in America today without losing the richness of character and wryness of insight that makes her writing sing in the ear. This is political theater at its best, theater where the characters suck us into theirÂ worldÂ so powerfully that the playÂ echoes inÂ our hearts as well as in our heads.